Mortal Endurance
by Rebellwithoutacause
Summary: "Daryl knew what it was like to be left out, twisted and thrown to the wall to dry in the baking sun with no one offering you help when you needed it most. He kept her safe resolved to shoot first, ask questions later, to do anything he had to do to make sure the both of them stayed alive." SPOILERS for the mid-season finale episode. R&R if you please!


**_Hello my lovely readers! God, I cannot even begin to describe to you the wrecked state of my feels after tonight's episode. There were tears. There was so much yelling at the TV I'm sure I upset my neighbors. This show…I swear. It's not good for me. Be still my heart. Anyway, because of all these feels, I /had/ to channel them somehow, someway, so this is my offering to all of you looking to work through some of this insanity. I hope you guys enjoy, lemme know what you think with lovely reviews! _**

**_Disclaimer: Don't own the Walking Dead. I think that's self explanatory. _**

**_Warnings: Various incarnations of various four letter words. _**

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This whole shit storm of a mess was exactly what he'd never wanted. He'd never wanted to be dragged down, never wanted to be drug through the muck and filth of human contact that made living so much of a pain in the ass on a day-to-day basis. He'd learned as a child how worthless emotions were. Didn't do jack shit except make him hurt. Good never came of gettin' attached to people. It just wasn't fucking worth it.

And then the end of the world goes and fucks them all over so hard that even the iron truths he clung to in order to keep him going don't mean shit. It was bitterly amusing that when the natural order of the world quit working, when the dead wouldn't stay dead, that all the things he was sure were dead inside himself came back to life too.

He was never book smart. That wasn't his strength. And he wasn't always the biggest or the best fighter either, although he could certainly hold his own with the best of 'em. He could survive though. Damn if he wasn't one of the ones he was sure as hell was going to make it. He didn't care much one way or the other if he did or not, it was just another day in the life of Daryl Dixon when people started shooting and thieving and killing each other just to stay alive. He'd never planned for the future. He never saw himself as having one. He still didn't. It was cruelly ironic that as the more dead rose, the more his feelings came back to haunt him. The more people that died, the more he wanted to keep living. The more Walkers brains he blasted, the more he found a reason to want to stay alive. Not a future maybe, cause exactly what sort of future could anybody really have in a world like this? Nah, there wouldn't be a future for him, but he had reasons that were worth fighting for now. And for some reason, the more people that died, the more those reasons grew.

It had started with Sophia. He hadn't been attached to anybody in the group before her. He'd fought along with them in the heat and thick of battle sure, cause he was human and he wasn't going to watch those people get ripped to pieces when he could do something about it. But when that little girl went missing and he knew he was the only one with an ice cube's chance in hell of finding her, he did what he had to do. He took an arrow in the side and Annie Oakley's bullet to the head lookin' for that little girl. Nobody could ever dare look him in the eye and say he hadn't done everything he could have. If he'd of found her dead that first night, or maybe even the second day, maybe he wouldn't have gotten closer. But he didn't. He'd gone out there day after day and every time he came back empty handed but with little clues here and there, he'd spiraled downwards, growing closer to not just Carol, but the rest of the group too. Rick had started looking at him differently. No longer did he regard him as dangerous, as some sort of guarded threat he might have to ward off. Respect began to shade the former sheriff's eyes when they fell onto Daryl.

Then Sophia turned up a Walker, just like Daryl had been afraid of. He'd been too proud to admit it, but in the quiet darkness when he was alone, he could just barely admit to himself that he'd been hopeful too. Deluded just like Rick, he'd let his heart go soft with hope of the idea that damn girl was still alive. Hell, if he could survive on his own in the woods, so could she. That was what he told himself. So when she'd shuffled out of the barn as a walking corpse, it was worse than a kick in the teeth. It was like being pistol whipped. All of it had been for nothing. And Carol…Carol had been crushed. Gone was her hopeful spirit, her willingness to believe in anything beautiful or innocent anymore. Daryl knew that moment when he'd had to drop his gun in order to catch her and keep her from running to grab her daughter that he wouldn't be strong enough to hold back the brutal change that would rock her.

Then not so long after that entire travesty Dale had been ripped to pieces too. And he'd done what no one else had the strength to do. It wasn't that it hurt him less. He and Dale never saw eye to eye on much, but the old man had the guts to fucking say what he thought was right, and not just say it, but stand behind it, act on it, fight for it, even when being confronted with hard, stubborn, even downright dangerous personalities like himself, Shane, and even Rick. Daryl had respect for Dale, and he knew that if Rick wasn't strong enough to do what had to be done, then he should, because it was what was right.

Then losing Andrea, round one. He couldn't believe that he was the only one who had offered to go back and look for her. Shit, Blondie had shot him in the fucking _head _and he still was the only one who was brave enough to risk going back for her. It had rattled him a little, but he understood Rick's reasoning. Still, it marked a change in the sheriff, and Daryl knew that if Andrea was still alive, she had the will to take care of herself. Will wasn't always enough in this world, but damn if it didn't count for almost everything when it came down to who lived and who died.

Then the prison, and the fucked up mess that had been created because of it. Daryl wondered if that building wasn't more trouble than it was worth. It had been a bloody mess when they'd found it, and he'd wondered if it wasn't cursed. Haunted in some way by all the trauma that had come before it. The depth of the graves he'd dug in the yard of that place seemed to be getting deeper every time he hauled out the shovels. He remembers so clearly that first day of sabotage and the desperate scatter as everyone tried to stay alive. Lori, Carol, and T-dog all running mad, getting lost in the tunnels and tombs of the prison. Even though Daryl had always thought Lori caused a lot more trouble than was worth putting up with, he had to stand by Rick's conviction in keeping her safe, and when she went, Daryl knew that she took with her some part of Rick that no matter what Hershel said he was never getting back. Rick would never be the same man he was after her death. None of them would be, but not all for the worse. Little Ass Kicker had been a turn out Daryl wasn't expecting. He wasn't expecting to be so attached to that little girl. She wasn't Sophia, she'd never be the lost one he couldn't find, but maybe she could be his chance to prevent it all from happening again.

He and T-dog had started out as enemies. Not for the same reason he and Merle had, just for the simple fact that Daryl needed someone to blame for losing his brother, and T-dog made a great outlet. The weeks and months spent together on the road however changed all that. Daryl knew better than to think T-dog had ever willfully hurt Merle or been the reason his brother was missing a hand. He couldn't count the number of times the man had saved his life in the day-to-day struggle that was their fight to survive. The evidence of his gruesome demise down in the tombs was clear to his hunter's mind about what he'd done in his final moments. He'd sacrificed himself, hoping to get Carol through, and for that, Daryl would always be thankful.

That first time he thought he'd lost Carol, he didn't know how he would have made it if he hadn't found her. He had been struggling to contain it, using whatever distraction he had on hand to keep busy from acknowledging it, but down in the tombs, with nobody asking him questions and no jobs to do, he wasn't able to keep it together. He needed to kill something, to maim, to rip and tear and destroy, to vex the world and vent just the tiniest piece of the horror exploding inside him at the thought of having lost someone that had done so much to build who he'd finally become. It wasn't as if Daryl came into the world broken. He'd come as a blank slate, and had spent his whole life fighting so hard to keep from turning into his father or his brother that he'd never spent any time on wondering who he actually was. It took too much effort to fight them off to waste any on trying to be someone with any sort of identity. Without them in his life to hold him down he had the opportunity, but he had been afraid to seize it. Carol had given him a reason, and a means, to become someone worth being. In the hunt for Sophia he'd found out exactly what he was willing to do for who essentially amounted to a stranger. Protecting the group, helping Rick, staying at the man's side, working with him to keep their new family safe, all of that had helped to mold him into someone he could look at in the mirror and not be ashamed of. He still couldn't let someone close enough to see or touch the scars that riddled his skin, he was convinced he might not ever be able to let that happen, but he had the worth of the rest of them now, and Carol had been the start. She'd seen all of that in him before any of them had, and she'd had the tenacity to keep telling it to his face until he actually began to believe it. The thought of losing all of that was almost enough to destroy him inside and out. When he'd found her in the cell, he'd never been so relieved or so genuinely happy. He couldn't express it as much as the others could, but he was pretty damn sure she could feel it in the way he held her against him and carried her back to safety. It was in that one moment he thought that maybe she had a chance to be the woman she had once been, and that maybe, just maybe, there might have been a chance for them to be more than two people who loved each other as simply family and fellow survivors. Holding her against him, carrying her through the tombs back to the cellblock, he'd thought that maybe now he could prove to her, and himself, that he was capable of another layer he hadn't known about before.

But as time had worn on, that pretty little fantasy shattered. The conflict with the Governor, the fear and pain and betrayal wrought from their dealings with the madman had hardened Carol in ways that had hurt Daryl's heart. He could never say that to her, he didn't want to deprive her of the strength and will to live she finally possessed, but he didn't know how to tell her he was afraid that she was becoming someone she should never be. Just like Rick, she hadn't been able to strike the balance between soldier and civilian. He wasn't about to put himself on a pedestal and say he had all the answers either, not by a fucking long shot. He'd done things he wished he wouldn't have had to do, morally and otherwise, but somehow he'd been able to box it all away and stuff it into the closet labeled 'Shit I Had To Do For X Reasons.' Those reasons were plentiful indeed, either his own survival, the group's survival, and any particulars could be divided between those two categories, and sorry to any God up there watching, he wasn't about to cry a river for those deeds. He didn't let it get to him. He didn't let it harden his heart. Maybe it was because he was used to pain, used to doing things most people weren't, maybe he'd learned as a kid how to separate himself in order to salvage any scrap of innocence he had left. Merle had failed at that task too, and sometimes Daryl laid up at night wondering what the difference between the two of them was. Sometimes he had no reason at all, just the luck of the draw. Sometimes he thought it was because he'd been closer to his mother, whereas Merle had been closer to their father. Either way, Daryl always counted himself lucky that he'd had that skill, and he wished like hell he could teach it to Rick, but most especially to Carol, who he felt truly deserved peace more than maybe any of them did. She'd been through so much, and he'd of done anything in his power to see her sense of security and trust in the world restored. But she was broken. Broken, and he didn't have the tools to fix her.

Then the one moment where he knew it was make or break. Merle a shuffling corpse, staggering towards him with blood dripping from his mouth, chunks of meat between his bloodstained teeth. It felt like the whole world was shattering as the knowledge had sunk into Daryl's psyche with weighted barbed spikes. He just couldn't process it all at once. All he knew was that he had to make it end. He had to destroy the monstrosity in front of him because it would annihilate him otherwise, and now he had too much will to lie down and die. The brutal repeated stab wounds to his brother's head vented his rage at the world, the vicious feeling gushing through his veins like liquid agony that just couldn't be beaten or bled out fast enough. When he was finally too exhausted to move he collapsed on the ground and cried for the first time in years. He just lay still, pinned to the ground by his grief, buckled and unable to get up for so long he was amazed he ever made it to his feet again. He still didn't remember exactly how he made it back home.

But it was then, when he'd come staggering through the prison gates, soaked in blood and tears, that'd he realized the prison really was home. Not because the walls and fences offered safety, or because there was food and medicine and loaded guns stashed inside. It was because the prison housed the group, the living people who didn't just mean the world to him, but were the world to him. All of them, everyone inside those walls were his family. Merle was his blood-kin, and no matter how fucked up their relationship might have been throughout his entire life, the fact that the same blood ran through their veins would never changed, but all that blood had been shed. Merle was gone, and though it tore and mangled a piece of him, Daryl could feel the bond between him and his family deepen even further. As the fight with the Governor crashed through their front gates, he was ready and willing to die for them. He'd die to protect any of them. If his life bought their survival, it was a price he would gladly pay. They were worth it. They all were.

Losing Andrea for real that night after the battle sealed that reality into him even deeper, like a brand against his skin, but that brand was a badge of honor, not a scar of shame. Andrea had looked at him so deeply that night as she lay dying at his feet. She hadn't just looked at him, she'd looked through him; through all the walls and guards and barbed wire he wrapped himself with, particularly in times of distress, and saw through to who he really was. That quality had unnerved him about her in the beginning, the way she could just cut through all the bullshit and see what was really going on with people when she really took a mind to it. It was ironic then that she had that gift but was blind to a man like the Governor. Daryl chalked it up to a deluded self-promise, that she could build some kind of life for herself that didn't involve misery and pain every single day. That didn't involve scraping skin and fighting tooth and nail for every tiny inch of ground gained. He didn't understand it, but he'd never had an easy life, and so fighting for everything he had was something he'd done since the day he was old enough to swing his fists. Her final words to him were a reminder of what he already knew but he couldn't say out loud. Like Dale, she had that way with speech that could translate all those feelings into crisp, clear, sword sharp words that stabbed through bullshit and pinned the meat of the matter to the chopping block. 'No one can make it alone now' she'd said to him.

_Ain't that the fucking truth, Annie Oakley. _

After the battle with the Governor, they began to take people in left and right, extending their protection and skills hand over fist to anyone who made the cut. Daryl knew that would mean losing people more easily, but he agreed with Rick; people were the best defense against people, and Walkers, and that was something they couldn't ignore anymore. At first Daryl didn't like all the strangers, but he'd learned to live with them. It was easier to see the good in them now than it would have been before. It didn't make it easier to lose them, that was for damn certain. All the people that died from the sickness, including the charred bodies of David and Karen, were like knife wounds. Someone else they lost, someone else he hadn't been able to save. It hurt. It hurt, and he had no choice but to just feel it because that was what his life had come down to now, and he damn sure wasn't about to drown it out with whiskey so degraded that it was probably close to poison. It was just life, and there was no use fighting it or fearing it. Pain would come, pain would go, that's how it would always be.

Losing Carol, not to death, but to a judgment call Rick had made…that had bitten through him like brass knuckles to the face. At first he couldn't believe…he couldn't understand how Rick could take that sort of judgment into his own hands. What the fuck had been all that shit about how he didn't make decisions anymore been about? Daryl scolded himself for being surprised though. He shouldn't have been. He'd known Rick for too long to really and truly believe that he could go for a long time without making the decisions. Rick was a leader, it was what he was best at, and even under the worst of circumstances, he had done a better job than a lot of other people would have, at least in Daryl's opinion. But it had come at such a great cost to the sheriff that he'd given it all up. Fine. His son was more important to him than being in charge. Daryl could respect that, to a point. Carl was a tough son of a bitch; he didn't need his dad holding his hand every minute of the day. Daryl tried to repress his irritation at Rick for just disappearing into the field with his crops when they had a large group desperate for answers about what to do, and then he thinks he has the right to banish Carol.

_What else could he do? What would you have done? _

Carol had killed David and Karen, and in some ways, Daryl wasn't surprised. He'd known Carol was different. He'd known she'd gone cold. She tried to pretend sometimes that she wasn't, but he knew better. The way she treated those girls, toughening them up like soldiers when they were obviously frightened children and not ready for the conditioning she was dishing out; it was blatantly obvious that she wasn't the same, and never again would be the woman he had once known. He cared for her, loved her, did everything he could have for her in the hopes that she could find that balance between the soldier and the civilian, but as time had gone on, he'd known better. He'd known better, he just couldn't say it. It hurt too much. It hurt, and it was one blow he wasn't willing to take to the teeth. So Rick had done it for him. He would never say he was grateful, but in the shittiest of circumstances, it was probably the best thing that could have been done. He'd muscled through the pain of the ragged wound torn deep inside, ready to follow it through to its end with Tyreese when all hell had broken loose.

He stood strong at Rick's side, ready and willing to march down the yard with the man if he'd it of asked him. Daryl was nothing if not loyal, and despite all of the tension between the two of them, he would never let Rick walk away without making sure the man knew he had his back. Rick was a good man. He struggled with rage and despair that blinded him at times, but Daryl wasn't about to withdraw his support because the man was only a human being pushed to the very edge of mortal endurance. Daryl knew what it was like to be left out, twisted and thrown to the wall to dry in the baking sun with no one offering you help when you needed it most. Daryl had managed to pick himself up off the ground on his own, but that was before the world had ended and destroyed so many boundaries between right and wrong. Rick needed help, and he'd more than earned it, and Daryl wasn't about to be like those piss ant cowards who promised the moon and stars and then when it came time to pay out, ran for the hills. No. If Rick had asked, Daryl would have gone down and stood right next to him, ready to give the Governor the finger and a big lead slug to the face right after, even if it meant they'd get their heads blown off.

Then he'd seen Hershel fall, Michonne's sword hacking through his neck with purposeless misdirection, hewing in deep enough to kill, but slowly. The bloom of rage that swelled through him was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He swore then and there that this was the last time, the last fucking time, that this son of a bitch would hurt them. He regretted every time Michonne had gone out looking for him and he hadn't gone with her, he hadn't helped her track. If he had…maybe Hershel would still be alive. Maybe their home wouldn't have been blown to bits. Maybe everything they had lost wouldn't have been torn free, like fingers being ripped out of the knuckles. Maybe two of the closest people in the world to him wouldn't have lost their father. Maybe his whole family wouldn't have been put in terrible, unimaginable danger.

He couldn't change the past, but he could end this, here and now. He could make it stop. He swore to a God he no longer believed in that come hell or high water, before the sun set, before he ran for his life, before he returned to his post as a shepherd for these scattered, terrified people that made up his family, he would see this man dead. He would destroy the monster than would forever try to tear them apart until he was at last silenced. He would make it end.

He'd seen the Governor fall. He'd seen Michonne's sword gleam through his chest. Though his palms burned with the knowledge that he hadn't been the one to do it, he knew the man was good as dead, and it was just enough to pull his head back into the present. He had to help his family. He had to get them out. He could not let any more of them die, but now they were scattered. Everyone had taken off in different directions, running for their lives. He didn't even know if how many of them had made it out alive, if any of them did. He found himself with Beth, Hershel's youngest daughter, and Little Ass Kicker's day-to-day caretaker. Having seen Hershel's hacked execution and knowing how much work she did to keep his little bright spot of light in his life happy, that made keeping her safe all that much more important.

"We gotta go, Beth. We gotta go."

He kept her safe, herded her free of the rapidly crumbling prison grounds that were also filling up with Walkers. He had their guns and his bow and his quiver with him, but no rations, no fresh water, no hope of shelter for the moment, and no way of knowing if any of the Governor's loyal fans were still lingering around. He resolved to shoot first, ask questions later, to do anything he had to do to make sure the both of them stayed alive.

He forced Beth to keep up at a fast jog, moving them steadily away from the prison and the danger zone. He knew the Walkers would be closing in and quickly, the sounds of the battle probably luring them in for miles. His body was toughened to life on the road, but Beth primarily lived inside the shelter of the prison, she didn't get more than a couple miles at his relentless pace before she collapsed from exhaustion and the drop out of adrenaline.

He spun on his heel and came back for her, setting his gun down and crouching to the asphalt to pick her up. "Beth, look at me." He couldn't shake the growl out of his voice but it wasn't out of anger and he hoped she knew that. He could see the terror in her eyes, the overwhelming ocean wave crush of pain beating down on her. He hoped he could cut through it because if he didn't, they had no chance.

"We'll find the others, but you gotta keep moving. We'll find them, but first we gotta move. Can't be like before. I ain't gonna let you die out here, but I am not cartin' your slashed wrist ass all over Georgia, ya hear me? Come on, get up."

He pulled her to her feet and she staggered against him. She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing down on him so hard that it was difficult to breathe. His body rebelled at the contact, his instinct squirming and shifting uncomfortably. No one was allowed this close, but he couldn't just tear her away from him.

"It's not like that," she whispered, shaking something awful against him even as the tears spilled free, soaking his chest. "Daddy wouldn't want that. I'm trying Daryl, I'm trying, I just…" he lost the rest of her words in the flood of sobs that wracked her.

He put his arms around her and pulled her against him, fighting through his instincts against being touched. She needed it. Christ on a cross, she needed it, and though he couldn't say it out loud, he needed it too. He needed something to shake him, to remind him of what he had to do, that he had something to fight for, that he had not lost everything that made life worth living. He had a small but corner stone piece of his reason for existence pressed up against him, and though it was just one piece, it was enough to keep him going.

He stroked his hand over her hair once and then pushed gently on her shoulder to separate them, but he tipped her head up by the chin so she looked into his eyes. "You try, I try, alright? I ain't goin' to let nothin' happen to ya, Beth. I swear. Now c'mon. Gotta find shelter before it gets dark."

She sniffled and wiped her eyes and cheeks, scrubbing at her skin with the cuff of her sleeve before nodding. He squeezed her shoulder and then set off down the road, the debris of the street swirling around their feet in the rough wind that picked up. As they marched on and Walkers got in their way, he took the lead charge, slashing and stabbing, kicking them away, making sure none of them ever got within five feet of Beth. Never in his life did he think he'd go to so much trouble, or that he'd find something worth so much of his time and effort, but for him, there had never been any big things to spend his energy on. Only little things. But he'd spent enough time on them to know that the little things put together the picture of the only big thing that mattered, and come hell or high water, he'd put that puzzle back together again. That was what gave him the strength to put his exhausted body into motion, clearing out Walkers and finding shelter for the two of them as darkness descended, stifling the light on this blood soaked day.

That was the future for him, and it was as damn good as any to fight for. It was something he believed in. Something that was worth fighting for. That was his future, and that was all that mattered.


End file.
